The demand for wireless communication services is increasing at a phenomenal pace. As personal and professional responsibilities increase, individuals find it more and more necessary to be traveling outside their homes and/or offices. Consequently, the need for cost efficient messaging services is greater than ever. Paging services offer a particularly attractive alternative given their ubiquitous coverage and relatively low cost.
Conventional paging systems, however, are unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. For example, in many instances a page request is sent to a user in order to request some sort of emergency service, such as repairing a computer or automated system, providing medical care, repairing a broken water main, and so forth. The person for whom the page is intended, however, may not receive the page, or may be unable to respond to the paging request if received. An example of the former case would be when a pager is inoperative, due to the pager being outside the paging network, the user turning off the pager, or because the pager's batteries are depleted. An example of the latter case might occur if the paged user is involved in a current emergency, or lacks transportation to the emergency site. In any event, the underlying problem that prompted a person or system to initiate the paging request would remain unresolved because the person originally paged is incapable of responding to the paging request.
At least one conventional paging system attempts to solve this problem by including techniques for contacting alternate users other than the originally paged user. This system, however, monitors the underlying problem and contacts alternate users if the underlying problem is not resolved within a predetermined amount of time. Consequently, a condition exists wherein multiple alternate users might be contacted to resolve the problem that initiated the original paging request, in which case the alternate users might unnecessarily arrive at the problem site. This would greatly inconvenience the unnecessary alternate users, and might also prevent them from responding to other emergency situations.
Therefore, it can be appreciated that there exists a substantial need for a method and apparatus that resolves the above discussed problems.